Love's A Game, Wanna play?
by halffictionalprincess
Summary: Some love stories only make sense in books. Or on ./Current-Dawn After A Dark Night-Harry and Hermione find hope again in the dawn after a long dark night.
1. The Devil

_**A/n- Written for Pairing The Character Competiton with the pairing Draco/Ginny.**_

 _ **The Devil**_

If there was something she'd learned by falling in love with Draco Malfoy- wait, that's wrong- by getting her heart completely shattered by Draco Malfoy, it was that the devil didn't come wearing a red cape with pointy horns on his head.

He comes as everything you wished for.

He comes with unpredictable kisses and uncontrollable laughter, with eyes that entrapped you and took you somewhere you'd never been before. He comes with charm and with the kind of smiles that makes you lose your mind.

He comes in like a hurricane, sweeping you off your feet until the ground becomes a faint memory. He doesn't come with a warning, but he should, with a warning that says, 'Beware, he will make you feel so alive that when he lives, and yes, he will leave, it will make you want to die because nothing will ever come close to how he made you feel.'

He is the kind of boy who no girl can resist, not even the smart ones, but she should've known better, she should've known how it would end.

Ginny Weasley , of all people, should've known better.


	2. The Goat Who Loved

_**A/n- Don't ask, okay? Just… don't ask.**_

 _ **The Goat Who Loved.**_

She was completely crazy and she knew it.

But what she also knew was that he was completely sexy.

It was completely crazy to be in love with someone who didn't even know she existed. Well, he knew she existed, but he didn't care that she did. To him, she was just number seven, a means to an end, a business asset, but to her he was so much more.

The others had noticed her obsession with him, they had noticed how happy she got when she saw him coming, when he touched her, when his long beard tickled her, they saw that she absolutely lived for those moments.

What they saw was that she was in love with someone who didn't even understand her language, but they couldn't understand that love existed beyond the boundaries of language, or place of residence, or they type of food they ate.

Or you know- the kind of species they were.

Okay, so maybe not that, but she couldn't help it, she loved the way he soothed her when she got a little too agitated, or how he scolded her when she wasn't being fast enough. She loved that he cared if she didn't feel well, she loved how he sang whenever he was around them.

She loved that he sometimes drank the milk he tipped out of her.

And yes, he wouldn't be able to identify her in a herd, but she could identify him anywhere.

For her, this was enough, it was because she wasn't an ordinary goat, she'd never been, she was the goat that gave the most milk, the goat that grew the softest fur.

She was the goat who loved.

More importantly, she was the goat who loved Abeforth Dumbledore.


	3. The Warmth Of Her Love

**A/n- Written for the Crack Drabble Competition with the prompt 'honest**

 **Disclaimer- I'll own HP the day the statue of liberty comes to life and gets scolded by McGonagall.**

 **The Warmth Of Her Love.**

"Always knew you were silent type, never knew you could brood,"

The female voice should've startled Percy, it would've startled anyone sitting in a dark corner alone, but Percy had stopped feeling a long time ago. More to the point, he'd stopped feeling about six months ago when his brother had been killed in front of his eyes and he'd just stood there uselessly as for the first time in forever, Fred Weasley stopped talking and didn't speak again.

"You're here ," he said, and turned his face to find Alicia Spinnet sitting next to him, with her hair a little wild against the wind and her eyes slowly counting as many stars as she could.

He chuckled, she never really had lost that habit, and he knew that if there were some things in the world that he could count on, Alicia counting stars would be one of them.

But his smile disappeared when he thought of something else he'd thought would never change; he'd never imagined that despite how annoying and childish it was, Fred and George would stop trying to make people laugh.

Now, the last time Fred ever smiled was also the last time he'd seen George smile.

Fred hadn't left alone, he'd taken George's soul with him, and Percy was also sure he'd taken away his mother's heart, his dad's joy, the sparkle in his sister's eyes and the very spirit of the Weasley family.

"Something told me you needed me," she just said, she'd always been good that, knowing when he would need the one person in the world who he'd never lost, despite the jerk he'd been during his ministry days. She'd never stopped trying, his family had-though he didn't blame them, but she'd never stopped trying to bring back the old Percy, she used to say she knew he was still in there somewhere.

She'd been right, he just wished he had realized it sooner.

"It's my fault," he said what he'd been feeling out loud, "it's my fault that he's dead, I distracted him. It's my fault that my mother has lost her son and it's my fault that George won't smile anymore. I should've never been that stupid, choosing a ridiculous job over my family. And then when I had made that stupid decision I should've just stayed away,"

He finished, frustrated and aware of the moisture in his eyes. But she didn't say a word.

"Aren't you supposed to tell me it's not my fault?" he asked, "Aren't you supposed to say something that will make me feel better?"

"I am," she said, "but I won't because I know you, and I know that they won't help. In all honesty, Percy, I don't have any words that I can say to take the pain away, but you know what I do have?"

"What?" he asked, staring in her eyes, and the way they looked at his soothed him somehow.

"I have arms that I want to wrap around you, and ears that would always be there to listen to every single thing that you have to say and I have a heart," she paused for a beat and he swore eternities passed in that one second before she completed, "I have a heart that loves you, it hurts to see you like this and is willing to try anything to make you smile again,"

And for the first time in a long time, Percy didn't feel numb anymore.

He felt the warmth of her love wrap around him, and for the first time in a long time, he smiled again at the beauty of this cruel but funny thing called life.


	4. Sound Of A Heart Break

_**A/n- For the Ultimate Battle Competiton with the condition- use the word awe at least five times, and For the 50:50 competiton with Draco/Astoria.**_

 _ **Sound Of A Heart Break**_

Have you ever heard a heart break?  
I have  
Sometimes I heard it coming from inside me  
Other times, I heard it after I said words that hit someone like a curse  
I heard it in the wishes of those who are beside me  
And I heard it every time I looked at my father  
It wasn't the noise of anger or screaming,  
No, it was the stunned silence of someone who just lost a piece of their soul,  
It's not the voice of sobs or tears as they hit cheeks  
No, it's the sound of an emotionless stunned silence when words register  
It was the shock and awe that someone could be so cruel  
It's the worst sound you can ever hear

I'd gotten so used to that sound,  
I heard it every day coming from in me that I got addicted  
The awe I felt when others felt how I used to.  
That I hurt people deliberately so they know how it feels  
It's a very powerful feeling, it makes you forget that while you are busy breaking hearts,  
You forget that you, yourself have one that could easily break.  
But it takes one heart, one face that you know you never want to see covered in tears,  
Lips you never want to be turned down.  
And a heart that should never be broken.  
It's someone who makes you feel,  
A happiness you never wanted to steal.

But you do anyway.

For me, it was Astoria,  
Astoria, the name always makes me smile, because Astoria reminds me of stories.  
We're all stories.  
She was the most incredible, beautiful, amazing story I had the privilege to be a part of.  
Even though I was just a chapter in hers,  
the most heartbreaking, sad chapter with a hated villain  
The next chapter would be one about how she rises above  
Above all that I made her feel  
About how she will, again, fall in love  
Find her hero, and forget the villain  
A happy ending to the story of Astoria.  
But to me, she was my entire story  
Every moment spent from now one, every word, every page, every chapter would be about her.  
And there would be no epilogue.  
No happy ending.  
A story about how I found someone who loved me and let her go.

The reader, would be awed by how harsh, cruel, and stupid I was to let her go.  
And I was.  
I was cruel, harsh and stupid enough to break a heart that was naïve enough to love Draco Malfoy.

But do you know what the worst part was?  
It wasn't her awe about how she ever loved me  
It wasn't that big teardrop as it flew down her face big enough for me to drown in  
It wasn't when she whispered "You win,"  
It wasn't the way she clutched her fist, closed her eyes and told herself to be strong,  
No, although these things did wound me, I wasn't dead yet.  
I died when those eyes,  
Thos beautiful eyes, usually filled with awe and love when she looked at me,  
Filled with hatred,  
When the light, that beautiful spark, just went away,  
She was heartbroken,  
And I was dead.  
I was pretty sure I was going to hell. 


	5. Dawn After A Dark Night

_**A/n- Written for the Ship Name Competition by Alys, with the ship Harry/Hermione and the prompt 'pumpkin pie'.**_

 _ **Disclaimer- Yeah, sure!**_

 _ **Dawn After A Dark Night.**_

A small knock on the door at four in the morning does not wake the sleeping, it only alarms those who were laying in bed, trying to fall asleep but the horrors in their past were too huge to be relieved again in nightmares.

Hermione was one of those people.

She stood up, her bare feet coming in contact with the cold ground and walked towards the door, she didn't bother to check through the peephole, she knew who it was going to be.

She knew there was only one person in the world who would know she was still awake, who would know that she needed him as much as he needed her.

She opened the door, and sighed, Harry hadn't slept a wink.

Again.

She would've been worried, she was a little worried, but she couldn't call him out on it, she would be the world's biggest hypocrite if she did because she hadn't slept either.

She didn't say anything, neither did he, but the truth was that they didn't need to, after nine years of knowing each other, words no longer remained a necessity.

He stepped inside and she closed the door behind him. He went straight to the couch, sitting down and leaning against it, just like he'd done for the past two weeks.

She just stood there for a minute, stared at him for a couple of moments, just like she did every time she saw him because she still couldn't believe they'd made it. After months of worrying in the middle of sleepless nights in the tent, that they wouldn't make it, it seemed almost unreal that they had.

In the few moments of weakness, of complete defeat and misery she'd allowed herself to imagine a world where all of this would be over, a world in which Voldemort would be dead and the good side would have won.

But it was also a world in which Fred and George had gone back to their joke shop, and Remus and Tonks were bringing Teddy up together.

It was a world in which they weren't broken shells of people, a shadow of who they used to be.

He opened his eyes and looked at her questioningly, and she just shook her head, walking past him to the kitchen and coming back with two slices of pumpkin pie, one for him and one for her.

He looked at her with raised eyebrows, Hermione shrugged; she'd started baking to distract herself. But after eight dozen cupcakes, a lemon pie, two pecan pies, a three tier chocolate cake and seven pumpkin pies, she was ready to admit that it hadn't helped. Much.

She'd sent most of the baked goods to friends or relatives, some to a nearby hospital, the only things she'd kept for herself was a dozen of cupcakes and a pumpkin pie.

And as much as she loved Harry, she wasn't going to share her chocolate filled butter cream cupcakes with him.

As she sat there with him, silence echoing through the room with the exception of the soft noise of chewing or fork banging against the plate, she wondered how it could a year have passed already. Exactly three hundred and sixty five days ago, she was at Hogwarts, fighting for her life, and now?

Now she was in an apartment in London, sitting on her couch in her oldest top and boy shorts, with Harry Potter, at four in the morning, eating the pumpkin pie she'd made earlier today.

Nothing about that sentence made sense to her, not the sitting on couch part, or the pumpkin pie part.

Soon after they finished eating, Harry abruptly stood up, she looked at him, with a question in her eyes but he just held his hand out to her.

She took it without thinking twice; if there was someone she would trust blindly, it would be Harry Potter.

He led her to her balcony, the city was quiet, faint sound of a little traffic could be heard if you listened very carefully, but in that moment she felt like they were the only two people in the world.

He sat down on the cold ground and pulled her with him; they sat there, in silence, for hours, and watched as the sun rose over London city. Enlightening the world, taking away every shred of darkness and wiping away all the traces of the night, waking the world up to a perfect dawn.

It was a brand new day, a new beginning, and somehow that, combined with the fact that Harry was still holding her had, and her head was on his shoulder, she was filled with something she hadn't felt for a long time.

She was filled with hope.


End file.
